Professor Hong Zhang

Professor Hong Zhang

University of Alberta , Department of Computing Science
http://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~zhang/

Expertise: robotics, robot vision, image processing, simultaneous localization and mapping

Biography

Professor Zhang is a full professor at the University of Alberta and has conducted robotics research for over 25 years. He is director of the Centre for Intelligent Mining Systems (CIMS) and affiliated with the Robotics Research Laboratory. His research interests span robotics, computer vision, and image processing. Prof. Zhang was involved in developing a technology for unmanned underwater inspection; his 10-year partnership with Syncrude Canada Ltd., supported by NSERC and Alberta Innovates, helped developing technologies for monitoring and improving oil sand mining processes. Among other forms of recognition, his collaborative research with Syncrude earned him a prestigious ASTech award in 2008. Prof. Zhang is known for his research in collective robotics, whereby biologically-inspired approaches, e.g., behaviors of social insects, are used as a means to understand the underlying principles that enable multiple robots to work cooperatively in accomplishing joint tasks. His current research focuses on visual navigation in which vision is used by a mobile robot to map and localize itself in its environments. Prof. Zhang has held the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Intelligent Sensing since 2003. He has received the IEEE Millennium Medal and won best paper awards at various international conferences on robotics, computer vision, and mechatronics.